In the process of sifting materials from several news agencies last week for Edge Davao’s inside pages, I stumbled on a story lifted by the Philippine News Agency about how one Sweden university discovered that larvae can process biodegradable waste at less cost and at no harm to the environment.
Although the story occurred from the other side of the globe, it has significance to this country where hundreds of LGUs are now in the hot seat for their inability to implement the mandate of Republic Act 9003 or the Ecological Solid Waste Management Act.
Hence, I decided to use the story in the hope of helping our LGUs to be able to think out of the box, to step out of their ivory towers and to try some ‘home cooking’ for once.
The story as lifted by the PNA tells of how Sweden’s Agricultural University in Uppsala (SLU) has discovered that food waste turned into animal feed using maggots can provide a series of advantages as compared to other methods of food waste disposal.
With the discovery, the university project has been given funding “to go ahead and build a pilot plant in the Swedish city of Eskilstuna, where millions of hungry maggots will eat at least one metric ton of food waste daily.”
SLU associate professor Bjorn Vinneras compared the discovery to “swatting two flies in one go, by replacing eco-unfriendly feed and as a bonus makes a profit on waste management.”
With the discovery, SLU has concluded that “maggot composting” will become an interesting option both for municipalities and industries.
Prof. Vinneras said it is technically much easier than building a biogas plant.
Well now, our LGUs need not go far and wide to avail themselves of this technology in managing their biodegradable wastes.
For one such technology has long been in existence and is actually being implemented by some LGUs that its Filipino discoverer, Fred Fangonon, has managed to convince.
Fangonon’s down to earth but highly-effective technology in addressing biodegradables has been discussed extensively in his book, Eco Composting.
Fangonon, a former OFW who once served as punong barangay of Loakan in Baguio City, has invented what he called the eco-composting receptacle (ECR) to turn biodegradable wastes into high premium organic fertilizer.
The ECR, he said is very efficient because it can compost all biodegradable wastes without shredding, turning over or adding enzymes.
The first composters inside the ECRs, he said, are comprised of maggots left by the common housefly. These dwell most only on the top layer of the compost where fresh waste is thrown.
“They eat waste that normally produces a bad odor as it rots but the smell disappears as soon as the maggots do not becomes flies.”
And since they are preoccupied with eating garbage, they die as maggots becoming themselves a rich part of the compost.
Or more appropriately as Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa song goes:
“They just lie there and they die there.”
The second composters, according to Fangonon, are the native earthworms that dwell mostly below the surface of the waste heap. They process the garbage left by the maggots. They eat the garbage that is in advanced stage of decomposition.
The final composters are the microbes mostly invisible to the eyes that occur in all parts of the ECR and are active from the beginning of the composting process up to the harvest of the compost. When the compost stops receding, it is then ready for harvest.
As an organic farmer for 15 years in La Trinidad (Baguio City’s next door neighbor), I can attest to the ECR’s effectiveness and to the organic composts ability to enrich the soil and to sustain crops. With my own eyes, I observed that the ECR also served as a deterrent to pesky household flies because it offers a ready food resource without them having to invade households.
I will be more than willing to help LGUs implement the technology in their localities.
